St. Joseph’s Hospital and Lakehead University, in Thunder Bay, are inviting everyone in the northwestern Ontario city to help create a unique art installation about the end of life.

The Reflection Room offers people a place to pause, think and then share their thoughts on the death of a loved one, or death and dying in general, explained Paul Holyoke, the director of research for SE Health in Toronto, a not-for-profit home care group and the organizer of the art project.

The room is a physical space, set up with pencils, cards and tissues, where people can read about others experiences with death, and then record their own.

“Hearing stories, reading stories, it’s the base of human experience,” said Holyoke. “The stories are sometimes funny, sometimes sad, sometimes expressions of regret, and very deep stories that touch people in a real, deep way.”

People are often hesitant at first to enter the Reflection Room, he said. But then they start reading and “they sit down and sometimes have a cry as they remember their own experiences and then they write something down and leave it for others.”

Canadians tend to avoid thinking about death and dying, said Holyoke. But advanced care planning – preparing for the health care we need in our last days, hours and minutes of life – demands we think about it and talk about it with our friends and family.

“There’s lots of death in popular culture, but what we really do is deny our own deaths,” he said. “What we’re trying to do with these Reflection Rooms is to find out if there is a space that we can set aside to move people from death denying to at least death discussing. Can we at least talk about death, in a useful way, that may get us to the point where we actually accept that we are all mortal and that we can think about our ends more holistically.”

SE Health is intentionally setting up Reflection Rooms in public spaces, such as libraries, museums and art galleries, to push the conversation forward.

Over 700 stories have been collected across Ontario to date, said Holyoke explaining they range from “Dear Mom, I wish I had…” to “the death of my wife changed my life in a good way, and a bad way.”

The Reflection Room in Thunder Bay is a partnership between St. Joseph’s Care Group, the Centre for Research on Aging and Health at Lakehead University and SE Health.

It is open daily from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. at the main entrance of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Thunder Bay until November 24.

You can hear the full interview with Paul Holyoke on CBC’s Superior Morning here.